


The Archer's Slayer

by Whedonista93



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: "I didn’t try to keep you away from my world, Clint! I made sure you knew how to survive it."
Relationships: Clint Barton/Buffy Summers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 106





	The Archer's Slayer

Clint drags himself home after the whole Avengers Initiative, aliens-invading-New-York mess and finds his bed occupied by his clearly trying-not-to-look-worried-out-of-her-mind wife, who is supposed to be in Africa. He doesn’t bother asking why she’s not. Honestly, he’s counting himself lucky she didn’t show up right in the middle of the battle in New York.

She looks up at him with a wry smile on her face. “So, aliens, huh?”

He huffs out a laugh and falls face first into the bed. “Aliens,” he confirms, muffled by the comforter.

She rolls over and drapes herself gently across his back. “You okay?”

He opens his mouth a few times, before finally giving up and just shaking his head.

She wraps herself around him and just holds him.

* * *

Clint sighs and rolls over onto his back, looking up at Buffy on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

She shrugs. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what, Buff?”

“Sitting at home, or wherever the hell I am, watching you fight on tv when I could be at your side, helping, watching your back.”

“Buffy we’ve talked about this. It’s too dangerous.”

She scoffs. “Right, ‘cause my job’s not dangerous.”

“Babe-”

“No. I’m not… I’m _done_ having this argument, Clint. You got the cookies. I can’t be your dirty little secret anymore.”

He frowns. “One of these days, you’re really gonna have to explain that cookie thing.”

She sighs. “That’s not the point. I… the point is, I can’t keep doing things this way.”

“So what do you want, Buff?”

“All or nothing. No more hiding. The danger argument has never flown, but now I’m done. You’ve been with your team _years_ now, and they don’t even know you’re married! And before you even think it, Nat doesn’t count; she’s as much mine as she is yours. You know how to find me when you make up your mind. If I don’t hear from you… I’ll have Angel’s office send you the papers.”

“Buff-” Clint shoots up from the floor, but she’s already gone.

* * *

The Avengers stumble into the farmhouse. “What is this place?”

“Home,” Clint answers, scanning everything in sight.

Barney is on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, Lucky’s head on his lap.

Lucky woofs happily and lopes over to greet Clint and Natasha.

Clint rubs his ears absently as he glares at his brother.

Barney shrugs, nonplussed. “She had one of those gut feelings she gets, thought something bad was coming, figured you’d hole up here.”

Barney’s voice snaps Nat out her daze and she pins Clint with a glare. “Where is she?”

“Gone,” Clint answers shortly. “She left.”

Natasha scoffs. “Took her long enough.”

Clint’s eyes bug. “ _What_?!”

“You heard me,” Nat snaps. “I fucking told you she wouldn’t put up with that shit.” She stalks off toward the kitchen, muttering a string of Russian profanities as she goes.

No one explains the interaction to the rest of the Avengers.

* * *

Steve and Clint are walking back to the Tower, enjoying the weather after gorging themselves on pizza, when a scream draws them toward an alleyway. Two dumpsters have been shoved across the entrance. Beyond them, a young woman is backed against a wall by two men with disfigured faces. Clint curses profusely enough that Steve raises his eyebrows, but Clint is too busy looking for the fastest way over the dumpsters to care. Buffy fades out of the shadows as his eyes land on a broken fire escape. Clint’s focus automatically shifts from the fastest way to get over the dumpsters to the fastest way to get _her_ over the dumpsters, and he snags the lid of a metal trash can. He shoves it into Steve’s hands. “Cap, hold. Just…” he drops to a knee and adjusts the angle, “here.” He pivots, still on his knee, the moment Buffy starts toward them at a run. He holds his hands out in a cradle, boosts her up to where the lid is angled, and marvels, as he always does, as she literally vaults over the obstacles in her path.

“Clint,” Steve protests, “what are you-”

“She’s got this one,” Clint says, never taking his eyes off Buffy. She lands in a crouch, precisely between the girl and the vampires.

She grins at them. “Come on, boys, don’t you at least want a bit of a challenge?”

“She’s a Slayer,” one says.

Buffy’s grin widens. “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that. Me, on the hand…” She draws a stake and dusts the vampire nearest to her before turning to the next with a grin more sharp than genuine. “I know exactly what I am.”

The second vamp turns to flee, but Buffy’s after him, running and launching herself off the alley wall to land in front of him. She holds her stake out. “Hold this for me?”

The vampire reaches out, an automatic reaction, taking the stake and holding it, confusion clear on his face, and Buffy steps back just far enough for a spinning kick, right into the stake and the vamp’s chest.

She picks the stake up off the ground, tucks it into the back of her jeans, and crouches in front of the girl, who’d slid down the wall and curled into a ball in the midst of the brief fight. “It’s all over, kid, come on.”

Clint enlists Steve’s help shoving the dumpsters aside, and by the time Buffy coaxes the girl into standing, the path out of the alley is clear. Buffy leads the girl right past them, and when Clint turns, he finds Dawn leaning against a cab, glaring at him. He flinches.

“This is my sister, Dawn,” Buffy tells the girl. “You’re Georgia, right?”

The girl nods.

“Dawn’s gonna take you somewhere safe and explain what’s going on, okay?”

Georgia nods, and climbs shakily into the cab.

Buffy doesn’t turn until the cab has pulled away and Steve asks, “Is someone going to explain to _me_ what’s going on?”

Buffy looks at Clint.

Clint sighs and nods. He holds his hand out.

Buffy steps forward and laces her fingers through his, beaming.

“Steve, this is my wife Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.”

Barely a moment passes after they exit the elevator into what appears to be some sort of common area when Buffy is full on tackled. A flash of red hair allows her to relax enough to throw herself into the fight merely for the fun of it. She ends up on top, but she’s pretty sure if it were a real fight, the redhead would have a knife somewhere not so pleasant. They shove to their feet.

Buffy grins. “Nat.”

Nat grins back. “B.”

Buffy rolls her eyes. “Why are you and Faith friends again?”

Nat shrugs. “Hot chicks with super powers.”

“Nat knows her?” Steve asks, clearly offended.

Buffy rolls her eyes. “Clint _technically_ met her first, but pretty much as soon as he brought her in, SHIELD realized she was one of mine, so I got her for about two years before she got to go back to SHIELD and partner with Clint.”

“We agreed on joint custody.”

Nat mutters something in Russian that sounds like it’s probably unflattering.

Clint smirks, confirming Buffy’s theory.

The dark-haired guy on the couch snickers.

Buffy zeros in on him. “I already know neither one of these assholes is gonna tell me what she said. How do you feel about making a new friend?”

He grins, slow and easy, and Buffy is reminded of some of the old-school charm Spike and Angel ever so occasionally display. “She said she’s not a puppy… with a bit more colorful language.”

Clint and Nat both protest, citing loyalty and promising retribution.

He rolls his eyes. “I ain’t scared of either of you. And she looks interesting.”

Buffy bounces over to him with a sunny smile and plops down on the couch next to him. “I’m Buffy.” She holds a hand out.

He eyes it for a minute, then wraps it in his own. “Bucky.”

Buffy’s grin widens. “We’re like name buddies.”

Clint comes over shaking his head. “No, you two cannot be friends.”

Buffy sticks her tongue out. “Bite me, Legolas.”

“Who’s the mouthy chick?” A new voice sounds. “And whoever the hell she is, can we please keep her?”

Buffy turns to peer over the back of the couch and sees none other than Tony Stark himself. She turns and looks expectantly at Clint. Clint turns to Nat, a near desperate look on his face, but she’s gone, now seated on the arm of the couch next to Buffy, giving him a near identical expectant look. 

Clint groans and hangs his head at the blatant display of choosing sides, then holds his hands up in surrender. “Babe, everyone. Everyone, the mouthy spitfire making friends with Bucky is my wife Buffy.”

Various exclamations fill the room and Buffy’s shit eating grin does nothing to help him drain the tension in his shoulders.

Eventually, the din dies down.

Cap’s got his kicked puppy face on again. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have trusted us enough to tell us about her.”

Clint runs his hands through his hair. “It’s not about trust, Cap.”

Steve frowns. “Then what is it?”

“If you had a wife, would you want her exposed to all this?”

Buffy scoffs and rolls her eyes.

He winces even as he turns his gaze to his wife.

She’s standing, scowling at him. “I really thought we were done with this. If we’re going right back to it, I’m outta here.”

He barely catches her as she storms past him, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his chest, burying his face in her hair. “Please don’t. I can’t… I can’t take anymore of these last few months.”

“I can take care of myself, Clint.”

He closes his eyes, trying to decide how to phrase his thoughts in a way that won’t end in her breaking his ribs and leaving anyway. “I know you can, I just… I don’t want you to have to all the time.”

She relaxes against him, just a bit, then pulls back enough to look at him. “You think it’s easy for me to stay on the sidelines watching you fight aliens and monsters and robots?”

“You think it’s easy for me to watch you?”

She frowns. “The difference is that I’ve never asked you to just watch. I’ve never tried to stop you from helping me. I didn’t try to keep you away from my world, I made sure you knew how to survive it.”

He blinks down at her, something like an epiphany forming. “Shit.”

Natasha chortles in the background. “Finally! It only took him how many years to catch up?”

Clint groans and pulls Buffy all the way into him, burying his face in her hair again. “Shut up, Nat.” He turns his face into his wife’s neck. “I’m an idiot, and I’m sorry.”

She finally wraps her arms around his waist. “You’re forgiven.”

When he looks up again, Tony is pulling a face. “What, Stark?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong here - which is highly unlikely, by the way - but she’s mad at you because you didn’t want her to fight with us?”

Nat snickers. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“But, she’s… what?”

Clint rolls his eyes. “She could probably kick your ass while you were wearing the suit, Stark.”

Buffy turns toward the billionaire and her eyes light up. “Oh, can I try?!”


End file.
